Classical antiquity

Stones of contention

THE entire temple of Athena the Virgin Goddess on the Acropolis at Athens, along with its sculptures and fitments of bronze, ivory and gold, was quarried, shaped, cast and built in a mere 14 years in the 440s and 430s before Christ. Not much more than a century later, Demetrios, a Macedonian warlord, was already using the Virgin's inner sanctum as the venue for sexual orgies on a grand scale. This is just one of the many uses to which this iconic building has been put, vicissitudes which are traced with verve and erudition by Mary Beard in this highly readable book, the first in a new series on ancient buildings, which Ms Beard is also editing.

The first important thing about the Parthenon is that, unlike most ancient Greek monuments, it survived more or less intact into modern times. Ms Beard recounts how in the meantime it has been a celebrated cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady of Athens, and then a magnificent mosque. In 1687 it was also an ammunition depot when it suffered a direct hit from Venetian bombardment, which blew up the middle of the building. It was in this sorry state, with a small mosque built in the middle, when Lord Elgin rescued/bought/plundered a large proportion of the sculptures, and took them to London. Further restorations, cleanings, uses and abuses of the temple and its sculptures bring the story down to the present. Ms Beard's confident scholarship gives her the licence to shower the acid rain of her humour on many time-honoured clichés, misunderstandings and sentimentalities. She throws far more light and adds far more colour to the story than the banal son et lumière which is presented in Athens every summer.

It may be, though, that her subversive wit has led to a questionable punch-line: that the Parthenon is a “wonder of the world” because it is dismembered, a symbol of diaspora. It is, she claims, “that sense of loss, absence and desire that now gives the monument its cultural power and urgency”. But does that do justice to the building in its setting on the Acropolis? She has nothing to say about its proportions in relation to those of that extraordinary sheer-sided plateau; she says scarcely anything about the colours of the marble and of the crags beneath as they change during the course of the days and the seasons. It is telling that not one of the 23 illustrations gives this perspective, or rather one of these many varied perspectives. Yet it is this very palpability within a landscape that makes many people believe that the Parthenon sculptures should be viewed, not in the grey light of their London vault, but within direct view of the location for which they were created.

Mary Beard enjoys exposing the short-sightedness of others, so she should appreciate this mild disagreement. We should remain grateful to her for such an entertaining, informative and succinct, account of one of the world's greatest, though far from the most grandiose, buildings.